"Very many pleasures are almost only pleasures because we hope and intend to recount them." –Giacomo Leopardi

The UK’s UFO Hotspots

We’ve all heard about the Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious sliver of the north Atlantic that gobbles up airplanes and ships like so many bags of Doritos. Who among us hasn’t gripped their armrests just a little tighter when their plane passes through this treacherous territory, immortalized as alien stomping grounds in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

The best place to spot alien in a kilt is in a Scottish bar. They usually appear after about your fourth whisky.

But sometimes, it seems, ET and his ilk like to exchange their Bermuda shorts for a kilt. Scotland’s Falkirk Triangle, which stretches from Stirling to Fife and the outskirts of Edinburgh, sees more otherworldly exploits than anywhere else on earth. (And seriously, what could be cuter than a little green dude sporting a tartan skirt?)

Aliens have also allegedly winged over the Broad Haven Triangle in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where a yellow UFO and a pointy-headed “humanoid” apparently dropped by in the 70s. A joy-riding spaceman…or Ziggy Stardust on tour?

If you’re up for some flying saucer-spotting, grab your binoculars and your aluminum foil hat and check out the UK’s top UFO hotspots. Read on for a round-up of where to go, with local hotels recommended by LateRooms.com.

Bonnybridge, Scotland

Aside from being sucked up by a tractor beam, you can’t get much closer to the “unidentified” action than Bonnybridge. With more than 300 inexplicable sightings a year, Bonnybridge, which occupies an apex of The Falkirk Triangle, has been named the UFO capital of the world—our world, anyway.

Broad Haven, Wales

In 1977, an interstellar stogie and a “silver creature” reportedly paid a visit to this little Welsh village. The strange events were witnessed by a hotelier, several school children, and a gaggle of “dinner ladies.” And really, if you can’t trust the nice women in hairnets who serve your kids their school lunch, who can you trust?

Warminster, Wiltshire

Ah, the Swinging Sixties, a decade of free love, social revolution and drug experimentation. Maybe someone spiked the water supply of Warminster, or maybe aliens really did repeatedly buzz this little Wiltshire town near Stonehenge. For more than ten years, folks reported seeing blinking lights, giant humming stars, and still more flying cigars. But you know what they say. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT accept mushrooms from a stranger. Particularly if he looks like this.

Rendlesham Forest Lights, Suffolk

To UFO enthusiasts, the Rendlesham Forest is better known as “Britain’s Roswell,” thanks to unexplained lights spotted in December 1980. United States Air Force personnel were among those who saw objects moving at thousands of miles per hour, which were tracked on radar. Lt Col Charles Halt (ret) has stated that “whatever was there was obviously under intelligent control.”

Cannock Chase, Staffordshire

Move over, Bon Temps. The fictional town from the hit TV series True Blood has got nothing on Cannock Chase.

Well, okay, maybe a few vampires…but Cannock Chase is said to harbor virtually every other kind of supernatural critter you can imagine: werewolves, Big Foot, “pig men,” and, of course, aliens on holiday. UFOs were first seen here in the 80s, but the town made headlines again in March 2015, when hundreds of residents saw a low-flying, slow-moving object with three red lights, which was so loud, it shook the houses. Attack of the…Drones?